Apple apologizes the right way

For all its mystery and most-valuable-company swagger, Apple can actually be quite contrite when it needs to be.

CEO Tim Cook’s apology Friday about Apple iOS 6’s glitchy new mapping software was surprising and, at least for this iPhone owner, welcome. I’ve found Maps to be pretty much unusable, and I’m glad to hear the company recognize just how bad it is.

One of my first thoughts was “Wow, Steve Jobs would never have apologized.” But then I thought about it a little bit more, and I realized Apple has apologized plenty of times in the past.

But do you remember all of these incidents? Probably not. Apple apologizes in a straightforward manner, and everyone moves on. In a lot of cases, the company also took fairly drastic steps to appease their customers, like giving them major monetary credits or, in the case of Cook’s apology Friday, even telling customers to use their competitors’ services. When’s the last time you heard a company tell its customers to do that?

You could criticize Apple for taking a while to get this apology out, or for sneaking in some marketing-speak about the “100 million iOS devices using the new Apple maps” and “more and more joining us every day.” But I think it’s still an example of how a corporation should act when it messes up.

For a counter-example, think about the mess Netflix caused last September when it raised prices and tried to move its DVD business into a new company called Qwikster.

In his apology, CEO Reed Hastings told customers “I messed up,” but only because he communicated poorly to customers, not because the business decisions were bad. The company maintained its stance on splitting the business and raising prices, and only inspired continued backlash. A few weeks later, it dropped the Qwikster idea, but not until the company suffered weeks of bad press and a major stock drop.

Apple took the opposite approach. It frankly admitted that the Maps product needs a lot of work, and actually told customers what to do in the meantime, even if that means going to its competitors. That contrition may allow the complaints about Maps to simmer down (though I still won’t be using it for directions any time soon).